STAR TREK - TOS - Devil World

VIP免费
2024-12-20 1 0 231.79KB 88 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Star Trek - TOS - Devil World
Six neatly uniformed men materialized in the center of the forest clearing and glanced anxiously around for
indications of life.
In the official records of the United Federation of Planets, this world was coded NC513-II; more
familiarly, it was known as Heartland. An M-type planet, perfectly suited for human habitation, rich in all
necessary resources, Heartland had only recently been colonized by a group of one hundred men and
women, most drawn from Earth's teeming numbers. Now an anonymous distress signal emanating from
Heartland had been received at Starbase 13. A ship had been sent in response to that call. These six men
were from that ship.
As the men watched, the colonists emerged from the surrounding forest. The commander of the mission,
Lieutenant Radly Marcus, was puzzled. Why were the colonists all gathered here at this one spot? Why
weren't they waiting at their own homes sprinkled throughout the forest and nearby meadows?
Marcus decided he had better find out.
He was thirty-three years old. A hard-nosed, keen-eyed veteran of Star Fleet, Marcus liked to boast
that he had seen everything the universe had to offer at least once and often as many as four and five
times.
As soon as he had stepped forward and examined the colonists, Marcus had to admit that he'd told a lie.
He had never seen anything like this in his life.
The colonists numbered close to one hundred. Men and women appeared in nearly equal proportions.
Their ages ranged from the low teens to the high forties.
Every last one of them-male and female, old and young-was stark, raving mad.
They babbled. They screamed. They howled and wailed. Many wept. They tore at their clothes, rolled
on the ground, swung sticks and clubs at their own faces. A few, catatonic, did not move at all.
Using his portable communicator, Marcus called the mother ship, explained the situation, and
recommended immediate evacuation. A medical team arrived soon after and prepared the colonists for
transport. Marcus tried to question a few, but the answers he received failed to make sense.
Then he thought about the native aliens. Wasn't it likely that these creatures might have some inkling of
what had occurred among the colonists? Marcus knew that the aliens lived in a nearby village. He took
his five crewmen and set off through the forest.
The native inhabitants of Heartland were known as Danons. A humanoid species, they were an ancient
race, having once established a civilization that at its peak had spanned half the Galaxy.
Marcus reached the village and found several hundred mud-and-grass huts. This was all that remained of
the once mighty Danon civilization.
He entered the village. It seemed deserted. Not a soul stirred.
In a clearing at the center of the village, a stone tower rose twenty meters into the sky. The structure was
formed in the shape of the letter Y, with an additional horizontal bar placed across the top. The base of
the tower was not solid. There was a doorway. Marcus peered inside, but the hollow room within was
empty.
His men gasped.
Marcus turned.
They were no longer alone. In sinister silence the aliens had arrived and now stood two deep in a circle
around the clearing.
When he saw the Danons, Marcus also gasped. He felt cool shivers racing across his skin. The hair on
the back of his neck seemed to stand on end.
Once again Marcus knew himself to be a liar. He had never seen anything in his life like this either.
Captain's Log, Stardate 4231.2;
With the Enterprise now undergoing general maintenance here at Starbase 13, I've decided to take
advantage of the opportunity by issuing an order for full shore leave commencing at once and continuing
until further notice. After the lengthy duration of our last voyage, the crew has shown no hesitancy in
taking complete advantage of the superb facilities available here for rest, recreation, pleasure, and delight.
Holding his hands high over his head, the magician brought his heels together and executed a stiff bow as
the audience that filled most of the tables below the stage rewarded him with a sustained burst of
enthusiastic applause. Beside the magician on a wooden table lay the supine form of a very pretty young
lady, neatly severed at the waist
I've heard about sawing girls in half all my life," said Dr. Leonard McCoy, chief medical officer of the
starship Enterprise, as he clapped his hands with the others, "but I never thought I'd actually see it done."
"It is impressive," Captain James Kirk said. "Of course, it'll be even more impressive if the magician
manages to put the pieces back together."
Kirk and McCoy sat with Mr. Spock, the Enterprise's Vulcan first officer, at a table near the front of the
club room.
"A rather elementary illusion, actually," Mr. Spock said drily, as the applause slowly subsided. Spock's
expression showed a slight frown, more of concentration than displeasure.
"You think you know how he does it?" McCoy said, reaching for his drink-Kentucky bourbon,
unprocessed, or so the waiter claimed, "If you do, how about letting us in on the secret?"
Spock peered at the stage. "It's a matter of mirrors. Three of them, I would suspect. One on each side of
the stage and a third at the rear."
"Mirrors?" said McCoy, wrinkling his brow. "I don't see any mirrors. All I see is the magician and the
girl."
The point of such mirrors," Spock said, "is that one cannot see them. Surely, Dr. McCoy, you are not
offering a magical explanation."
"Oh, no. It's a trick and I know it's a trick but, damn it, Spock, the fun in a show like this comes from the
illusion of reality, the suspension of disbelief. That girl looks to me like she's been cut in half. I know she
hasn't been, but I prefer to pretend that she has."
"I find no pleasure in being deceived."
"It's not deception. It's a game. We-"
"Gentlemen," Captain Kirk said. "Can't we concentrate on the entertainment on the stage?" Kirk was
grinning. This quarrel between Spock and McCoy was only part of a long-standing debate between them
concerning the subject of reason versus emotion. "Let's watch the show."
The three of them focused their attention on the stage. The magician-who billed himself as Dr.
Faustus-was dressed in a devil suit, complete with horns and tail. A thin black mustache tucked under his
nose added to his Satanic facade.
Stepping to the front of the stage, the magician addressed his audience in a thin reedy voice. "Ladies and
gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Because of the acclaim you have awarded me, I find
myself nearly at a loss for words. So much at a loss for words, in fact-this is terribly embarrassing-that I
fear I may have forgotten the exact incantation now necessary to make my pretty young friend whole
again."
A murmur of delighted laughter floated through the room, but there was a slightly nervous tinge to it Even
Kirk couldn't help wondering: what if this wasn't a joke? What if the magician really was telling the truth?
"I must ask for your indulgence," the magician said. "May I have silence? Complete and absolute
silence?"
Amazingly, as the magician turned to the table where the severed girl lay, he got exactly what he had
asked for. The room fell silent. Even the waiters froze in their tracks. Not a glass tinkled.
The magician threw back his head, shut his eyes, and rocked on his heels. "Avoo," he said softly, barely a
whisper. "Avoo-abboo-akkuu." His hands passed through the air above the girl's body.
"Avoo-abboo-akkuu." He spoke more firmly, louder. "Avoo-abboo-akkuu." Leaning down, he opened
his eyes and stared straight at the girl's face. Then he drew back. "Avoo-abboo-akkuu. You are whole
again. You are fine."
If anything, the silence thickened. No one even seemed to be breathing.
The girl stood up. It took Kirk a long moment to comprehend what this meant: if the girl could stand and
move, she must be whole again.
The magician took the girl by the hand and led her around the table. The audience erupted at last in
frenzied applause.
"Well." said McCoy, through the clamor, "now what do you think, Mr. Spock?"
"Since the woman was never in any legitimate danger," Spock said, "no miracle was necessary to save
her."
"Only another trick?"
"Not even that."
Before the argument could gather momentum, a waiter appeared magically at Kirk's elbow. As a captain,
he seldom had to wait long to be served. After McCoy had requested another bourbon, Kirk decided to
have a drink of his own. "A spacerigger's delight," he said, with as much aplomb as he could manage.
McCoy made an anguished sound in his throat "You'll kill yourself with that stuff, Jim."
"But it's a spaceman's drink, Bones. I am a spaceman."
"It's a spacerigger's drink, whatever the hell they are. Look, if you want my opinion-my medical
opinion-you'll call back that waiter and plead temporary insanity."
"Nonsense," said Kirk, slapping his stomach. "The trouble with you, Bones, is you've never learned how
to enjoy yourself."
McCoy made a disgusted face, and Kirk laughed. He couldn't be sure whether he'd ordered the drink
for his own pleasure or merely to irritate poor McCoy.
The magician was addressing his audience again. "Ladies and gentlemen, I now intend to offer as a grand
finale to the evening's entertainment a very special presentation. As you may have noted from the trim of
my costume, I am not wholly unacquainted with a certain denizen of Earth's nether regions: namely, the
devil. In his honor-and yours as well-I now present a feat unparalleled in the history of magic. Ladies and
gentlemen, I now give you-direct from hell-through the courtesy of Satan himself-two dozen living,
breathing demons."
But Kirk was no longer listening to the magician. A woman had entered the room and Kirk, along with
everyone else, was watching her, transfixed. The woman was about thirty years of age, tall,
white-skinned, with a lustrous crown of black hair piled on top of her head. She wore a thin ankle-length
gown that flowed with her long graceful strides. Pretty was too inconsequential a term to describe the
woman. She was strikingly beautiful, despite the fact that a goodly portion of her face could not be seen.
A white surgical mask concealed her lips, nose, and chin from view.
Even the magician paused for a moment, staring at the woman, before turning and moving to the rear of
the stage.
The woman found a vacant table close to Kirk and sat down. Above the mask, her eyes were riveted
upon the stage.
"Remarkable," Dr. Leonard McCoy said softly.
Spock turned and looked at him in surprise. "What, Doctor? The magician?"
"I mean that woman," said McCoy. "Don't tell me you didn't notice."
"The one who entered just now? A lovely woman, I admit, but is that necessarily remarkable?"
"Even when she's wearing a surgical mask? A surgical mask here where the air's as pure as any in the
universe?"
"Perhaps she has a medical reason," Kirk suggested, drawing his eyes away from the woman at last.
"She may be a Jain," Spock suggested. "At least that was my first impression."
"A Jain?" said McCoy. "What's that?"
"An ancient Earth religious faith, an offshoot of traditional Hinduism. Jainism was founded by the sage
Mahavira in the sixth century before Christ"
"But why the oxygen mask?"
"To avoid accidentally harming or killing any form of life," Spock said. "Jains are noted for their reverence
for life. They divide conscious matter into five general classifications, or favas, according to the number of
senses each entity possesses. The first classification, for instance, includes all those things possessing only
touch: clay, chalk, rain, dew, fog-"
"Fog?" said McCoy, apparently bewildered by Spock's ready flow of data. "I thought we were talking
about living things."
"To a Jain even the fog is alive. It possesses a soul, the same as you or I. In fact, since Jains believe in
reincarnation, your soul or mine may eventually end up there."
"Yours, I hope," said McCoy.
Spock stared at him. "I believe the nature of one's next life depends upon how well one has lived this life,
Doctor."
The magician appeared ready to go on with his show. He stood in the center of the stage and waved his
arms over his head in opposite circles. His lips were moving, chanting, but his actual words were not loud
enough to decipher. As he moved, churning his arms, a thin mist began to spread across the floor of the
stage. As Kirk watched, thoroughly transfixed, the mist thickened, obscuring the figure of the magician
himself.
Then the demon appeared. At first it was merely a dark shape within the mist, but gradually the shape
assumed a definite form. It had arms-four of them-and legs-just two-and a huge misshapen head. The
mist parted and Kirk could see the face.
He felt ill. Even during his worst nightmares, he had never conceived of anything this hideous. The demon
squatted naked on its haunches, mouth open, spittle dripping. Its green skin was covered with hundreds
of tiny red warts. A pair of curved tusks extended from the lower jaw, and its eyes were like two bloody
sores.
The magician continued to chant His voice was louder now, but the language was unfamiliar to Kirk.
A second demon was now materializing beside the first. This one proved to be even more grotesque than
the other, with two heads instead of one and three sharp horns sprouting from the top of both skulls.
A third demon was appearing.
"If I throw up," McCoy said, "allow me to apologize in advance."
"Mere illusion," Spock said stiffly. "The magician has an excellent imagination-that's all."
Kirk found solace in Speck's rational thinking. "Of course it's a trick," he said.
"Yeah," McCoy agreed, "but how would you like to have an imagination like that?"
The third demon was a female, with three eyes, breasts like inflated bladders, and feet the size and' shape
of shovels.
A fourth demon was appearing.
A fifth.
A powerful odor enveloped the room. Kirk felt even sicker than before. It was the scent of decay, of
putrescence and death. All right, he felt like shouting at the magician. You've given us a show. Now let
up. Now quit.
Someone screamed.
The sound, shrill and horrified, snapped the magician's spell. Kirk turned and saw the woman with the
surgical mask standing beside her table, a finger pointed at the stage. "You!" she cried. "You took him!"
Her finger was aimed not at the magician but at the demons. "You took my father!"
Lunging forward, she rushed the stage. As she passed, Kirk reached out and caught her arm. "Wait," he
said. "It's only a trick. You shouldn't let-"
Above her mask the woman's eyes bulged crazily. She gave a muffled cry and tried to break free of
Kirk's grasp. Suddenly, her feet slipped from under her. She started to fall. Kirk caught her body in his
arms before she struck the floor. Out of the corner of an eye he noticed to his astonishment that the stage
was bare. The magician, the demons, the mist-all had vanished.
Dr. McCoy hurried around the table, reaching for the medikit lie wore on his belt. The woman was
unconscious. "Put her on the floor," McCoy said. "I imagine it's shock but I'd better be sure."
Kirk laid the woman gently on the carpeted floor. McCoy knelt beside her, feeling for a pulse. After a
moment's hesitation, he reached up and removed her surgical mask.
Kirk gazed at the woman's face. As he had expected, she was beautiful, her features as delicate and
finely drawn as classic sculpture.
McCoy looked up, a worried expression on his face. "I think this may be serious. We'd better find a
place where I can examine her thoroughly."
The manager of the club appeared, an expression of worried concern on his round plump face, and
offered Dr. McCoy the use of his private office, a cluttered cubicle to the left of the stage. Kirk carried
the woman into the room and placed her on a portable cot He stepped back, while McCoy crouched
down beside her. T think she may be suffering from acute malnutrition," he said, after a brief examination.
I'd need better facilities to make a definite diagnosis, but that could well have contributed to her
faint-ness."
"Shell be all right?" Kirk said.
"Oh, sure. If I wanted, I could wake her right now."
"Then you don't think it was just that show."
"I'm sure it didn't help." McCoy was reading the woman's blood pressure, using a glass instrument the
size and shape of a compass. Fun is fun, but that gaggle of demons was simply grotesque. That wasn't
magic. It was a freak show."
"But impressive," Spock said, from close to the doorway.
"It was that" McCoy leaned back. "I think try a vitamin injection." He removed an air-powered
hypodermic from his medikit and injected a clear fluid through the cloth of the woman's sleeve.
The vitamin had an immediate effect. The woman opened her eyes. She looked at McCoy, then at Kirk,
and put her hands to her mouth. "My mask. What have you done with it?"
"It's here," McCoy said. He picked the mask off the floor where he had let it drop and handed it to the
woman. She made no attempt to put it back on.
"Who are all of you?" she asked.
"My name is Leonard McCoy. I'm a doctor. This is Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise and Mr.
Spock, first officer aboard the same ship."
The woman shut her eyes and made as if to sit up. McCoy pushed her gently down. "Not too quickly,"
he said.
She opened her eyes. Then please tell me where I am. What happened to me?"
"You fainted, I'm afraid. Do you remember anything? The magician was putting on a show. You stood up
and screamed and-"
"I remember," she said quickly. She looked at the surgical mask in her hands. "I suppose I don't really
need to wear this here."
"I wouldn't think so. The air here is completely purified."
"Then I won't bother."
"May I ask you something?" McCoy said.
"Yes. You helped me."
"I'd like to know the substance of your normal diet. What foods do you usually eat and how much?"
"You think I'm suffering from malnutrition."
He nodded. "It's one possible explanation for why you fainted."
"Well, you're right I do have malnutrition."
"Well, if there's anything we can do, anything you need to help." He broke off, embarrassed.
She seemed puzzled for a long moment, then suddenly laughed, a vibrant throaty sound. "Oh, it's not
money," she said. "I'm a Jain. Do you know what that is, Doctor?"
McCoy looked at Spock and nodded. "It's an offshoot of the traditional Hindu faith founded in the sixth
century B.C. by the sage-"
"Then you must understand the reasons for my diet"
"Well, as a matter of fact." It was plain from McCoy's expression that he did not understand. Turning, he
looked to Spock for help.
"The Jains," said Spock, "are strict vegetarians. The more devout, in fact, prefer to limit their dietary
intake to such foods as berries, nuts, leaves, roots, and simple grains."
"I try to eat nothing more complex than rice," the woman said. "Away from Earth that can be a difficult
regimen to maintain."
"Do you use vitamin supplements?" McCoy said.
"Never. They aren't strictly forbidden, I suppose, but I happen to believe chemistry cannot provide a
road to salvation. Don't you agree, Doctor?"
McCoy spread his hands. "Then there doesn't appear to be a great deal I can do to help you. I want to
warn you, though, that if you keep going the way you are, you're apt to end up in an early grave."
"If you were as familiar with my religion as you claim, you'd realize what an empty threat that is."
"Remember, the Jains believe in reincarnation," Spock said.
"Oh," said McCoy.
"So you see," the woman said, "when I die is of no particular concern to me. It's the nature of my next life
that matters."
T suppose that's your right to believe."
"Thank you, Doctor. Now may I sit up?"
"If you feel strong enough."
The woman came to her feet in a swift, graceful motion. "I do." She looked at each of them in turn. "I
owe you an apology. I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Gilla Dupree."
"Not the Gilla Dupree," Kirk said, automatically.
She laughed. "As far as I know, I'm the only one."
The senso-artist? The composer of-?"
"Birth of a Living Star? Yes, that one, and the others, too." Plainly, Gilla Dupree was well accustomed to
her status as a celebrity.
"It's a privilege to meet you," Kirk said. "I'm a great admirer of your work." Gilla Dupree was
undoubtedly the most talented senso-artist who had ever lived. Senso-drama, a synthesis of symphonic
music and holographic storytelling, was a relatively youthful art form but one that Gilla Dupree had very
much mastered. Kirk recalled the first time he had played Birth of a Living Star and how it had taken him
an additional five hours to recover sufficiently from the three-hour performance to feel strong enough to
leave his chair.
"I am also a great admirer," Mr. Spock said. "After Shakespeare and Tolstoy, I regard your work as the
Earth's most sustained achievement in the dramatic arts."
"That's a considerable compliment," Gilla said, "coming from a Vulcan."
"And coming from a human," Spock said, "your work is awesome."
Kirk had not been aware of Spock's interest in senso-drama. He found it a bit difficult to comprehend.
How could someone who claimed to be without emotion find merit in such a totally emotional form?
"Now if you gentlemen don't object," she said briskly, "I really ought to be going. There's someone I
came to see."
Kirk blocked her exit. He wasn't exactly sure why. He knew only that he wasn't ready to let her leave
yet. "The magic show is over, I'm afraid. The audience has undoubtedly left"
"Oh, damn." She bit her lip. "He promised to meet me after the show."
"Well, it wasn't your fault Those demons-or whatever they were-would upset anyone."
"I guess I'm more superstitious than I like to think."
"You accused them of taking your father. Do you remember saying that? What did you mean?"
Her frown seemed genuine enough. "I don't know. My father is the reason I'm here, you see. Years ago
we were separated. I've spent a great deal of time and money trying to locate him. The man I was
supposed to see after the show supposedly knows something. Perhaps I just had him on my mind."
"Undoubtedly," said Kirk. Cilia no longer showed any strong inclination to leave. He knew he was
deliberately prolonging their conversation. "Perhaps you should tell us more about it We might be able to
help."
"You?" She seemed surprised. "Why should you?"
"If your father's somewhere out here in space, we might have met him ourselves."
"I don't think so." She acted inwardly amused. "That large ship that just docked-is that yours?"
Kirk nodded. "The Enterprise."
"Then maybe you can help me. Not now, but later, after I've found out exactly where my father is. I'll
need some way to get there from here."
The Enterprise was hardly designed for use as an interstellar ferry, but Kirk did not wish to discourage
Gilla from further contact "Perhaps we could help.
When you know something definite, why don't you come and see me?"
"I'll be sure to do that, Captain Kirk." Her smile was radiant
After she had gone, Mr. Spock was the only one of them to find the right words to express the feeling
they shared: "A most remarkable woman," he said simply.
As Kirk slid into the soft chair opposite the huge desk of Commodore Wilhelm Schang, he said
admiringly, "This is quite a place you have here, sir." The walls of the vast office were lined with dozens
of tridee prints, several of which were presently in motion. "Compared to what we were used to, it's as
plush as a palace."
Commodore Schang frowned. He was a big man, with broad shoulders, a strong face, and short
metal-gray hair. As a young lieutenant, Kirk had served under Schang aboard the old Tresher. Too
damned plush for a man like me," Schang said. "A job like this may sound like paradise after you've
spent forty years piloting starships of every size and description, but let me tell you, Kirk, I'd gladly
switch places with you at the blink of an eye. Do you know what this job entails? It's talk, nothing but
talk. I speak, a computer transcribes my words into symbols, another computer interprets those symbols
back into words and tells people what I've been saying. We talk back and forth constantly, me and the
computers, but I never actually do a damned thing. I miss being emperor of my own little kingdom with
nobody looking over my shoulder. You've got the best job in the Galaxy, Kirk, and don't ever forget it."
"I try not to, sir, but calm has its blessings too."
"Well, you can have them. Give me a good healthy dose of action. I'm afraid I'm going to rot, sitting in
this chair. Another year of this place and I'll be like a flower that nobody's remembered to water."
"Have you requested a transfer?"
"A dozen times. Ten dozen times. Requested. Asked. Pleaded. Begged. You're too valuable where you
are, they tell me. I don't believe a word. Why do they need me? The computers could do it all-and they'd
enjoy it"
Kirk tried to appear sympathetic. He knew Commodore Schang was deliberately exaggerating the worst
aspects of his job. Commanding a starbase was a complex and arduous task. The decisions Schang was
required to make might affect the lives of the millions of entities, human and otherwise, who resided in this
sector of the Galaxy. If the job was boring, that was only because Commodore Schang performed it so
well. If he hadn't, the excitement he craved would have arrived at his doorstep in a great wave.
"But you didn't come here to listen to an old man's senile prattling," Schang went on. "What can I do for
you, Kirk? Somebody in the game room been cheating your crew at cards? One of the ladies make off
with a man's life savings?"
"Nothing as dramatic as that, sir. I only wanted to see whether you had any orders waiting for me."
摘要：

StarTrek-TOS-DevilWorldSixneatlyuniformedmenmaterializedinthecenteroftheforestclearingandglancedanxiouslyaroundforindicationsoflife.IntheofficialrecordsoftheUnitedFederationofPlanets,thisworldwascodedNC513-II;morefamiliarly,itwasknownasHeartland.AnM-typeplanet,perfectlysuitedforhumanhabitation,richi...

展开>> 收起<<
STAR TREK - TOS - Devil World.pdf

共88页,预览18页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：88 页 大小：231.79KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 88
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注